Armored Core: A Reason to Fight
by Joak Drysso
Summary: A re-imagining of Armored Core 4 and Armored Core for Answer. Sometimes, all a cause needs to get moving is the right people working for it. Allen Barker is one such man. This is the story of Line Ark's struggle against the Pax Economica.
1. Chapter 1

Armored Core: A Reason to Fight

Armored Core: A Reason to Fight

An Armored Core Fanfic by

Joak Drysso

--

The machine lumbered across the land. To the human eye, its progress may have seemed glacial, but each step covered roughly half of a kilometer. The truly terrifying aspect of this machine was not, however, the speed at which it moved, but the feeling of inevitability that it carried. This machine was destruction incarnate.

Six was the number of main cannons it boasted, able to rotate to cover forward, rear, and respective sides, as well as all angles above the machine. Not to say that it was defenseless if the incredible machine was attacked from below. Armed with an incredible compliment of missile launchers and high-caliber machine guns armed with APCR rounds, the machine was well-equipped to deal with any force sent to siege it. For enemies that happened to survive long enough to get directly beneath it, bomb dispensers placed in hundred-yard intervals on the underside of the machine meant that even that option was a death trap.

The Arms Fort Spirit of Motherwill strode inexorably on toward its target, preparing for the opening act of the most sordid war in human history.

--

Sophie LeBlanc was happy to be alive. At the ripe age of seven, though, this was a constant state for her. It was the first of November, and that meant that it was La Toussaint. School did not meet, and that meant that she had an entire day to herself and her family, and that evening, which it now was, was the festival. The streets of Lorraine were lively, as families and couples and singles wove their way through, meeting friends old and new, reigniting passions and generally enjoying themselves. It was full of sensations that stimulated the developing empathic ability, as she felt as though she was walking on clouds, a high that she had never before known.

And yet something seemed horribly wrong with the entire affair, a niggling sensation at the back of her mind that suddenly cut through her euphoria. With startled eyes she turned in the direction of the sensation, prompting confused queries from her parents. She searched the sky, wondering about that sensation. Her blood was chilled. She was all of seven years old, but survival instincts bred into humanity from millennia ago understood that feeling all too well. Someone was intending to kill her.

All at once though, that sensation was lost as something else caught her eye (she _was_ only seven). Being so distracted, she pointed up, and stated, with more than a little glee and happiness, "Look, mama, papa! Look at all of the shooting stars!" This exclamation prompted not only her parents to look up, but several people standing nearby. Indeed, in the sky there were thousands of streaking points of light. A wave of awe hushed the crowd as more and more people noticed it. Then, applause rippled through the crowd as the childish delight at such a magnificent sight spread.

And then all at once that glee and happiness crystallized into fear, and the fear quickly spread to terror as her empathic abilities registered those same emotions from around her. She was the first to scream as the points of light suddenly changed their arcing course over the world and plummeted straight down at them. All at once, the people surged, going every which way trying to flee the coming apocalypse. People were trampled and killed instantly. Sophie managed to hold onto her mother's hand long enough for her to see the edge of the crowd. Then her mother fell, her hand slipping from her daughter's. Fortunately, Sophie was too far away to see what happened next.

She fought the best she could against the river of bodies and emerged onto the side of a street, crying desperately for her mother and father amidst all of the screaming. She turned her tear-streaked face to the heavens, and had no more time to ponder the whereabouts of her family as a missile struck the ground a foot in front of her and detonated.

Lorraine, miraculously, survived the first barrage. The city was cratered, buildings annihilated, but there was still a semblance of something, and people had managed to survive that apocalyptic rain. Then, from the far distance, came six booming reports. The survivors had enough time to see the projectiles racing toward them before they struck and detonated, completely annihilating the remains of Lorraine.

With no regard for the destruction it had caused, the machine continued to move on its way, the second barrage of missiles being loaded, the cannons cooling from their expulsion of the collected Kojima particles. Several more times it would repeat this pattern over the night, with many other cities never receiving even the slightest warning. The corporations had shut down communications when the operation started. The world, for this night, was completely silent.

The next day, when desperate officials restored communications, the world was already in shambles. While America could easily transfer the nation's command to NORAD in the Cheyenne Mountains, other world powers were rendered helpless with their capitals annihilated. That morning, the corporations, now united under the ideal of Pax Economica, announced and declared the National Dismemberment War. Laying out a long list of complaints including the mismanagement of dwindling materials and the subsequent danger facing the human race, the Pax Economica declared that the nations of the world were unfit to govern.

Their plan, they claimed, was to provide humanity with a purpose, a meaning for existence, security and safety and happiness. The world would be returned to its natural state without humanity spanning the globe. Eventually, mankind would take to the stars. Their weapons in this conquest, they stated, were the sword of righteousness, the ten Arms Forts that even now were in the process of completely and totally annihilating entire cities and countries, and the shield of faith, their legion of devoted Armored Core pilots. Nothing the modern military could throw at them would be able to compete. The logical choice was surrender. Surrender, and the corporations wouldn't have to annihilate your country and most of your population. Surrender and be granted a higher status in the new world order. But first and foremost, surrender.

Astonishingly, despite the fanatical nationalism that marked every conflict it had ever faced in the past, Russia was the first to capitulate. The entirety of the Serbian Wastes had been taken by Armored Core legions and the citizenry were being held hostage, while another Arms Fort advanced from the west. Rather than lose everything, they surrendered. As such, Kamirovgrad, the colony built atop the remains of Moscow, would have the densest population of any colony after the National Dismemberment War.

Other countries did not give the corporation forces the time of day. Japan was among these, completely untouched by the opening theater of the war. The traditional arrogance that marked their nation would not permit them to serve. By November Third, the citizens that had been able to evacuate from Japan were all that was left when thousands of Armored Cores descended upon the island country and, after pausing to eviscerate the national military, proceeded to obliterate any trace of civilization beyond rubble. Live footage was transmitted worldwide, and people watched in terror as civilians were annihilated with bursts of fire from guns and missile launchers. This event would become known as the "Nightmare of the Third" worldwide.

Horrified by the brutality of the corporation's methods, several other countries surrendered the following day. Among these was America, who, only minutes after completing their surrender, turned their available forces northward to begin a joint assault on a staunchly opposed Canada. The sudden attack, planned with the surgical precision so common to the United States, eliminated Canada's primary defenses immediately. Four hours after the attack began, Canada surrendered as well.

In two days, the biggest advocates of freedom and democracy had fallen under the heel of the corporations. While a surprisingly resilient Britain held out against astonishing odds in Europe, India fell quickly. In a coalition that surprised the world, the Middle East, including Israel, stood resolutely opposed against the infidels, and waged a horrific guerilla campaign that saw most cities in the Middle East completely destroyed. These companies also suffered the highest casualty rates of any corporate forces that took part in the war. China and southeast Asia held out the longest, mostly because the requests for surrender had to navigate the Byzantine systems of the Chinese government, as well as processing the votes from its subordinate states in the region. When an Arms Fort appeared over Beijing one day and drew a scorching line in the earth with one of the beams on each tip, the process sped up significantly.

The largest difficulty the corporations had with conquering Africa was the sheer size of the continent. The constant infighting amongst the African peoples had, despite the best efforts of all outside parties, kept its civilization on a significantly lower level. While pockets of heavily-westernized society existed, by and large there was nothing Africa could do to stop the rolling tide of flying metal. After a stubborn resistance that saw the majority of south Africa erased, the remaining states surrendered. With so many falling, Australia and New Zealand allowed themselves to be conquered with little resistance, hoping to preserve most of their populations.

In the span of two months, the corporations had waged the most widespread war in the history of humanity, and had emerged victorious. Almost immediately, they began construction of the colonies, the supercities that would house all of humanity. It was decided that there be ten, placed at key locations in the world to ensure that the corporations had easy trade routes available to them. While more than a billion had been killed in the process of annihilating the world, the corporations now had to deal with the fact that they were placing the remaining billions into ten distinct locations. These locations were the places where Kojima radiation from the Arms Forts was weakest. They established nearby farms, massive plots of land where crops were grown and made into various foods and then shipped to the city.

Packed into such small spaces, human life changed greatly. Mob mentality ruled the city, and initially there were constant revolts against the corporations. When the corporations continued to respond with increasing disregard for human life, and then began to send units on patrols through cities to keep the peace, these revolts died down fast. Almost everyone found employment though the corporations, but there were those who could not. These outliers were quickly shunned by the general society for being drains on incredibly limited resources, and oftentimes actively encouraged to commit suicide to make everything easier on the rest of them. More than a few followed this advice.

Of course, despite the idea of the Pax Economica unifying the corporations, there was as much infighting as ever, and after a short recess from conflict to make sure that the world was running as the Pax Economica wanted it to, it became commonplace for civilians to be forced to scatter when explosions dotted their city as Next pilots fought it out for their employers. Most of these conflicts were deliberately scaled back to reduce the chance of their carefully executed plot collapsing in on itself. Half of the corporation members came to believe that it was just a return to things for normalcy's sake.

Despite the harsh militaristic actions of the Pax Economica in response to any kind of rebellion, several groups popped up to oppose them. Most infamous were the Maglib Liberation Front, a collection of Muslim and Judaic revolutionaries who had survived the initial war against the corporations and now sought to restore their people to freedom. Through means even the Pax Economica couldn't discern, these soldiers appeared in every region of the Middle East to wipe out patrols and supply trains, forcing operations in that region of the world to a grinding halt.

Additionally, a rebellion under the name Hold the Line rose up in Europe. Mostly British and German, these men did the unthinkable and assaulted one of the immense Arms Forts with the intent of capturing it for use against the corporations. In a worldwide-televised broadcast, the Arms Fort obliterated the attacking force inside of a minute before continuing on with its duties. A previously unnamed revolutionary group in North America named themselves Line Ark after this event, and proved to be the ghosts in the machine, forcing the corporations off their rhythm time and again in the American regions.

Despite the Pax Economica's best efforts at annihilating these rebel groups, time and again they slipped away, costing the Economica far more than they were costing the rebellions. Eventually, the corporations simply accepted their presence and turned their administrative attention toward other matters that were far more sensitive than these rebels. They did not, however, turn a blind eye to them, continuing to send patrols and operations to try and eliminate these rebels, but not with the same fervor as before.

In this manner, fifteen years passed.

--

Brrrring. Brrrring. The alarm clock whined again and again, forcing the sole occupant of the room to groan in frustration and irritation at the sudden interruption. Forcing his head up, sleepy blue eyes glared daggers at the machine, strategically placed across the room where he could not reach it. Moaning again, he swung his legs out of bed, and then forced his body up. Stumbling over to the screeching alarm, he fumbled before his fingers finally tapped the nub that turned it off. The incessant screeching stopped, and Allen Barker sighed with relief.

Running a hand through mussed brown hair, he yawned, blinking his eyes rapidly to try and adjust them. He stretched, listening with sleepy satisfaction as bones popped, before wrapping himself beneath a bathrobe. Cinching it at the waist with the sash, he stepped out of his room and was immediately greeted with the delightful smell of breakfast. His body quickly waking up, he hurriedly showered and dressed himself. He finally stepped out into the extravagantly decorated living room of his parent's house.

His mother, Leann Barker, turned and smiled at him, waving from the table. "Morning, dear. Breakfast will be served shortly if your father hasn't burnt down the kitchen." Ignoring the shouted reply from the kitchen, Allen returned the smile and sat down at his customary seat. His fingers tapped the top of the surface and the virtual screen popped up in front of him. He brought up his mail, checked the news, and then listened to a few messages before collapsing the screen, just in time for his father to set down the food. The tall man, James Barker Junior, analyzed his family's reaction to the food and smirked. Something of a gourmet chef, he took great delight in surprising them with his latest dish.

Allen, however, opted for the safer, familiar foods. As they ate in silence, James took the time to do what Allen had just done. However, he stopped at a news article, and frowned. "Economica claims victory over rebel faction Line Ark at Fayetteville," he read aloud, "two hundred armored units destroyed in the scuffle." Allen could feel the gaze of his parents shift to him. Although he had never made an official announcement of it, due to his current living circumstances they had discovered his job as a Raven in the employ of Line Ark. As such, when the propaganda flowed from the Pax Economica to the cities, he was a source they could trust.

He set his fork down and wove his fingers, resting his chin on his hands. "Well, it's true that Line Ark suffered a defeat at Fayetteville, in the sense that we quit the field and let them take it. They didn't mention the mines that were rigged to detonate. I believe Intelligence estimated some four hundred Armored Cores destroyed and their pilots were presumably killed. We lost two machines, no people. They took a city that was rigged to blow. I'd say that in the grand scheme of things, it was our victory."

Silent sighs of relief issued from his parents, and breakfast resumed. "Still," James commented in between bites, "if you keep retreating you'll run out of places to hide. At some point you need to make a stand against them if you want to get anywhere. The people support the cause on a few levels, but you lose a lot of people when you don't have much to show for it."

Allen chuckled softly. "You know that and I know that, father, but the higher-ups, from what I'm hearing, are somewhat hesitant to commit to any major operation. They believe that they have an information leak and that any kind of massed assault would have us staring down the wrong end of an Arms Fort. So they want to do delaying actions and whittle down their forces until they can draw them into a big trap."

His parents made various noises of agreement, and then they finished breakfast in silence. Then, Leann dropped the bomb. "So how is your apartment hunt going?" Allen blanched. It was sort of a sore subject. He had, after all, been living in his parent's house ever since returning to Anatolia. Not by his own choice, but because it was nearly impossible to find residence, and his new contract demanded his stay in this colony. As a result, to his burning shame, he had asked his parents to house him. He paid his way for everything, but the embarrassment remained. "Not well. I've put in applications to about every place in the colony and haven't heard a single response so far. Maybe I'll get lucky, but…" He sighed.

"You could always build one." James smirked. "Nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty." Allen couldn't help but laugh at the double-entendre. Building homes required a license and free plots of land in the containment zone that Anatolia had available were next to non-existent. Without the license, the house would be illegal and destroyed immediately, unless Allen decided to resist by physical means.

"In any event, I need to get out. I have a friend that I need to meet. She has very important information regarding the next few actions." He pushed the seat back and then stood up, and nodded in thanks before leaning over to kiss his mother's forehead. "Thanks for breakfast, dad, I'll be back tonight." Stopping to grab his pistol and tuck it into his pants, he heard Leann call after him, "If you're going out with a female friend, don't worry about coming home tonight, we'll understand!" and groaned. If there was one female he could not imagine going to bed with, the woman he was meeting with, his operator assigned from Line Ark, Fiona Jarnefeldt, was it. Their relationship was not so much hostile as it was…cold. Tense. At any given moment it could break into open hostility, but a higher purpose kept them restrained.

Barely restrained. If she flashed that knife she kept one more time, Allen swore he would show her what _he_ kept on him at all times.

He sighed, tried to relax. His shoulders were unnaturally stiff, and he would rather not be tense when he met her. She had a habit of noticing things like that very quickly. And ribbing him for it. Relentlessly. This was not helping improve his attitude about meeting her. He thought back to the girl he had known all those years before, and to the woman he was hesitantly going to meet now, and wondered how the two could be the same person. As a girl, she had been aloof, a league above the rest of the class in intellect and certainly not hard on the eyes, though a younger Allen would have done his best to maim whoever even insinuated he was interested in _girls_. As a woman, she was nothing short of irritable. A simple misspoken word or wrong analogy could, depending on her mood, send her into a tirade of corrections. Allen, who was normally easy-going, could barely stand her when she did that.

The only saving grace, he figured, was the fact that she was very professional and concise when she was acting as his operator. In fact, he was fairly certain that she was Line Ark's most capable operator. Her uncanny knowledge of Armored Core construction had, even in his short time serving with them, led to him surviving through encounters he honestly should not have won. He also owed several on-the-spot repairs to her technical brilliance, not that he would ever admit it. He had his pride as a Raven, and she was just that frustrating.

He rounded the corner and saw the café – a café, of all places, as though it were a date – that she had set the meeting at. Glancing around to make sure that there were no obvious watchers (not that there ever were, but paranoia paid in this profession), he crossed the street and entered the building. Spotting the girl, he slowly made his way forward. Much to his surprise and consternation, she rose and, apparently not satisfied with a simple greeting, practically wrapped herself around him. To add to his increasing alarm, she tilted his head down and kissed him full-on.

He was more than a little shocked, but instinct, both animal and danger, told him to work with her on this. So he embraced her as well. To the world it was a pair of young lovers meeting, and after a few seconds most of the onlookers looked away. However, as Allen pulled back and allowed his eyes to wander briefly, he noticed a pair of men watching them rather intently. Registering nothing on his face, he looked at her and flashed a winning smile, then gestured for her to sit, taking the seat across from her.

"Well, that's one way to say hello." Allen said, forcing the smile to remain on his face. Now that the blind had been put up, he had to maintain it. His mind was still whirling, but the fact that she had been tailed here meant that there was no other option but to play it to the hilt. The waitress came by, and he ordered a soft drink before calling up the virtual screen. One hand slid out and claimed one of hers as he browsed as many casual sites as he could think of. "So how has your morning gone?"

"Oh, the usual. Early to bed, early to rise." She was doing the same thing he was, now, surfing the colony network to try and throw their tail. "Keith says hi, by the way. He has something he wants to get in touch about." _That_ caught Allen off-guard. Keith was the codeword they used for Kateb al-Rashid, the man officially assigned as Allen's handler. If he was saying 'hi', then that meant something was going on. He paused for a moment to finish browsing something, then turned to look at her directly. "Oh, really? What does Keith want me to do?"

"He says it's nothing big, but you know how he is." Allen nodded, quickly processing her words and translating them into the proper context. Kateb was saying that it was fairly small-scale, but there was a risk to it; a raid? He'd get the details from Kateb later unless their ghosts left. Not likely, the way that they kept glancing over at his table. "But he doesn't have time for it right now, so he'd like you to come by in the evening." Allen hummed, and then shrugged and let a light chuckle rise from his stomach. "Yeah, sure. I'll see what I can do."

He'd actually be calling in about an hour; if he had interpreted right, Kateb wanted the mission to go tonight. They were working in a small timeframe. In the meanwhile, they idled time away, checking news postings and mail while making small talk and generally looking like a young couple meeting in the café to catch up before heading their separate ways. After forty-five minutes, they paid and left. Allen kept checking, and sure enough, the two men were still following them. At an undecided intersection, he spun her to face him, and kissed her once, quickly. "This is my exit. Gotta run, sweetheart."

He allowed the irony and sarcasm to finally seep into his voice as he dropped the role. Without a care for the surprise that registered in her eyes, he dropped her hand and stepped back, miming the shooting of a gun before he turned, walking away. Patting his pants to make sure the gun was still there, he hoped she would get the message. Before they had left, they had agreed that the agents would split up when they did, and Allen was not good at giving trackers the slip. Fiddling with his keyring, he began to head toward the hangar where Wyvern was being held. As a Line Ark safehouse, he stored his Armored Core there with certainty that it would be more secure there than anywhere else. The perfect place to set an ambush and dispose of the body.

--

On the half-hour trek over, he called Kateb and confirmed the mission, before noting that Fiona had been marked for surveillance, and that one of the men was now tailing him. Finally arriving, he hauled the door open and stepped inside, walking deeper into the building. Moments later, he heard footsteps, light, but present. Standing off to the side in the hangar bay where Wyvern was located, he waited for the man to come through the door. "Beautiful, isn't she?" was all he said before taking aim at the man's head and firing. The gunshot, hellishly loud in the hangar, echoed repeatedly before fading.

The man fell to his knees, and then slumped over. Mechanics, currently polishing, repairing, and rearming Wyvern glanced over momentarily to see an unfamiliar man slumped on the ground. Not a word passed before they returned to work. Allen, his hand trembling, forced the gun back into its makeshift holster. Trying to force his body to calm down, he waited for Leon to show up. Soon enough, a short, balding Caucasian man appeared, grumbling to himself as he assessed the scene. "Do you ever do anything in half-measures, Barker? Good god, it's a wonder we keep you on with all the shit you drop for us to pick up."

Leon flipped open a cell phone and after a short conversation in a language Allen couldn't quite comprehend, he hung up and nodded. "It'll be taken care of. You holding up all right? You look ill." Despite being something of a hard case, Leon, having formerly been Brooklyn born-and-raised, looked after people who used his safehouse like family. The younger man smiled gratefully, and tried to calm his trembling arms. "It never gets easy. Killing in person, I mean. I've definitely done it before, in an Armored Core, but…it's not personal. I don't see them die."

The short man patted Allen on the arm. "There there, kid. Why don't you take a look at your machine? It might take your mind off of this mess, and you can let me know what's missing so we can get it taken care of before tonight." Numbly, Allen nodded, then turned and walked toward the machine. Tilting his head back, he beheld his behemoth machine. The Armored Core Wyvern. Twenty-two meters of refined metals and alloys, forty-seven tons of metal, weapons, and ammunition colored a now-dulled silver and emerald. Grasped in its left hand was a high-caliber machine-gun, specifically modified to fire explosive rounds rather than the armor-piercing ammunition that was standard fare against Armored Cores. In its right hand, a high-power shotgun, armed with grenade rounds to increase the power, lay dormant. But the real pride of Allen Barker's Armored Core rested on the left shoulder. In a tight spot, the hollow core compartments could open, allowing Allen to store one or both of his weapons. In exchange, he could wield the weapon he nicknamed 'Gram'. A solid sword, it had been designed and developed by Fiona; its crowning point, in comparison to the laser blades that all Armored Cores wielded, was its ability to completely bypass primal armor. It was not exceptionally sharp, but the sheer mass of the weapon was more than enough to deal a serious blow to the enemy directly.

On each shoulder, his heraldry, the wyvern wrapped about a sword, announced his presence. When his machine engaged in combat, he always used his IFF openly, announcing his presence as Wyvern proudly. His old contacts in the corporations from when he still worked as a Raven for them occasionally sent him mail about the identity of this Raven, since his machine had been registered under a different name when he piloted for them. He was content to recycle his favorite rumors about Wyvern, and send them off with only that to consider.

It never ceased to amuse him that the Wyvern had so quickly become a legend. With such regal colors and arrogant bearing, perhaps it was no surprise that Wyvern very quickly became Public Enemy Number One in the American regions. The Wyvern was one of the few known figures of the Line Ark rebellion, and due to the brazenness of its actions, it was the obvious political figure to crucify. Allen was perfectly fine with it, since it meant that the leaders of Line Ark remained off the radar as long as he was there.

And now the Wyvern would strike again tonight.

--

It was nearly midnight in a shattered Milledgeville, Georgia. The convoy had been moving for three days straight, and Barry Crenshaw was exhausted from pulling what was closing in on a twenty-four hour shift in the driver's seat. It was only a steady diet of caffeine and self-administered pinches that kept him from falling asleep and letting the lead truck drift off-course and slam into the countryside. He yawned, blinked and tried to keep his eyes focused on the road ahead.

Driving was not what Barry had ever wanted to do, but working for the corporations was the easiest way to get a job anymore, and he had to admit, this was about as secure as anyone could get. The convoy contained some two hundred trucks, driving side-by-side except for the first truck, that Barry drove, and the last truck. They were transporting a lot of material to a corporate base in Kentucky, and apparently it was very important that they get these materials, because the convoy was guarded by twenty Armored Cores and some seventy _Scimitar_-class Muscle Tracers.

It was suicide to try anything.

--

"Do you have confirmation on which trucks are carrying the munitions?" Allen inquired softly. Just from the lack of standoffishness, Fiona could tell that he had already entered what she had dubbed his battle trance, where everything was put off to the side to prepare for the oncoming rush of battle. For whatever reason, that voice sent shivers down her spine, and not in the good way. She was acquainted with what some might have termed his 'voracity' for battle, and that voice was always a prelude for her nightmares. It baffled her how this man could possibly have been the same boy she had known so long ago; the young Allen had never shown this kind of violence.

"Fiona. Do you have confirmation?" She blinked, then swore under her breath. She had allowed herself to get distracted. He'd probably hang her out to dry on that. "Yes, I have them. There are twenty-five. Linking the information now." She tapped a few buttons and sent the assessment through the uplink. Now it would be appearing on his HUD. They were all concentrated at the rear of the convoy, the obvious position for them. If anyone took them out, the damage would be limited to the explosive section of the convoy without blocking passage for the others. The rest of the convoy could cut and run.

She heard Allen cluck his tongue in frustration, and then sigh with resolve. "Understood. You counted seventy MTs and twenty ACs, correct?" She frowned, and then checked the numbers again. His sensors should have picked that up as well. "Yes, I'm seeing that. Why?"

Allen, in his cockpit, frowned. "Because I'm picking up another set of ten signals from somewhere. I'm going to start my run, try and get me an idea on what the hell those are, please." Upon hearing her confirmation, he closed his eyes. He wasn't sure why he did this before the start of every action, but he whispered a silent prayer to anything that happened to be listening from the beyond.

Then, after selecting single-fire on the machine gun, he took careful aim. With precision, he squeezed twice, firing a pair of explosive rounds at one of the two leading munitions trucks. Even as the bullets struck and detonated, igniting the ammunition inside the vehicle and causing a spectacular explosion, he targeted the last truck and fired twice again. The resulting explosions set off a series of chain reactions that consumed all twenty-five trucks, and two nearby trucks as well.

The explosions set the convoy into confusion, even as the handlers attempted to restore order. The ACs moved along with the convoy as the horde of MTs shot toward the origin of the bullets. Closing on the clearing, they discovered nothing. Sensors worked overtime to find the source; suddenly, the heat signature shot up…from directly beneath.

A barrage of fire from his machine-gun tore through five of the MTs almost instantly. Not sharing the benefit of primal armor, under the deadly fire of weaponry, especially from an Armored Core, they had very little in the way of survivability. Wyvern's boosters roared as Allen triggered the overboost, and it shot upward, continuing to fire into the cloud. Another three MTs fell to the machine-gun barrage; a fourth unfortunate MT caught a point-blank shotgun burst that ripped through it without issue. The Scimitar, its front virtually unrecognizable now, stalled and plummeted to the ground.

Flicking on the IFF, Allen now set to his true task. He had already annihilated nine, but he still had more than seven times that many to destroy now, and without burning enough ammunition that he could accomplish the destruction of the convoy and maybe a few of the other Armored Cores guarding it. Now that he hovered in the middle of the cloud of Scimitars, he waited for the proper moment and then cut power to the boosters, allowing the machine to plummet as the initial rounds were fired. Six more explosions erupted as crossfire hulled and destroyed the MTs. They quickly directed their fire downward, and rifle fire impacted on the expanded primal armor.

Wyvern landed heavily on the ground, joints creaking under the stress, and Allen had it moving and weaving, throwing as many shots off as possible while returning fire. More aware now, the MTs proved somewhat difficult to kill, and Allen "tsk"ed in irritation as his ammo counter fell steadily. If he had equipped a missile launcher, this would have been simpler, but he had never been one for combat from a large distance.

Checking his machine's energy, he primed the generator and then ignited the overboost again, the hellish roar signaling the end for a few more of his opponents. Wyvern, much like its namesake, danced through the air from enemy to enemy, performing a ballet on emptiness, single shots from both weapons drawing forth gouts of fire as MT after MT fell. More shots rang off of the primal armor, and Allen kept a careful watch on every gauge as he continued his rampage.

When at last the generator showed signs of exhausting itself, he cut the thrusters, falling like a rock to the ground again. All told, he had counted eleven confirmed kills. Twenty-six enemies destroyed, forty-four to go. Swearing in irritation, he checked his radar again. True to corporate form, the convoy was already a ways away, and those ten signals were very close by. Swearing in frustration, he fired off two bursts from the shotgun, individual rounds clanging off of the MTs before detonating. The damage was minimal, but he spun Wyvern about and charged after the convoy, leaving the surprised MTs struggling to catch up to him.

Allen caught up with the convoy quickly enough, knowing full well that some of the escort ACs were being arrayed to defend the caravan now that their MT screen had apparently failed. His chest rising and falling as he struggled to calm down, he scanned. There were no immediate hits on his radar, but five ACs were missing from the convoy. Meaning they have been sent his way. Biting his lip, he swept the area visually, and saw nothing. Moving between the ruins of the buildings and houses that once lined the streets of Milledgeville, he chased after the convoy.

It was a surprised outburst by Fiona, who had mostly been silent thus far, that spared him a heavy hit. "HIGH HEAT SOURCE DETECTED, STOP MOVING!" Wyvern paused mid-stride, and a lot of _something_ hit the ground in front of him, the force throwing the AC back a bit. The excess force was absorbed by the primal armor, but Allen winced as he saw that it had drained a good chunk. If he had taken that directly…

Wyvern spun, searching for the offender, and spotted a quadruped AC lining up a second shot with the shoulder-mounted cannon. Even as Fiona warned him that it was firing, Allen was shooting up to avoid the concussive blast, already returning fire. The explosive rounds impacted and detonated all over the primal armor of the other machine, clouding his sight slightly, even though the cannon traced his arc perfectly. The cannon fired again, and Allen growled, nudging a button with his right pinky. Vents on the right side of the core opened and fired, nudging the AC out of the way of the immense, molten round. Continuing to watch his ammo counter, he rained shells down. He saw the primal armor dim, and then with a certain bloody satisfaction watched it collapse. The explosions rippled across the machine's armor before one found a special point in the core's armor, causing the machine to ignite. In the luminous glow, he spied the other four Armored Cores, apparently now preparing for a joint attack.

Allen landed harshly, grunted. All of one hundred shells remained in the machine gun, and the shotgun had sixteen shots. He was again losing ground to the convoy, but these enemies weren't so easily ignored as the MTs. "Fiona, get everything you can focused on this convoy. I want to know where that convoy is headed, how they're getting there, and where best to intercept them. I'll take care of these and move on the convoy. If you can find me an easy extraction point I'd also appreciate it, but I doubt that there will be one." He spoke resolutely, already extending Wyvern's left arm. He squeezed the trigger, and let fly ten rounds, all impacting on the machine's primal armor. In response, a veritable hail of bullets and missiles were loosed in his direction.

He thumbed his thrusters on, jetting backward, plowing through rubble as destruction rained around him. Though he managed to avoid several of the missiles, many more still found their mark on his primal armor, dropping it even further. Using the smokescreen, he stole around several buildings, using the time to recover, give his primal armor a small change to regenerate. The storage compartments of the core opened up, and he stored both weapons. Reaching one hand up, the clamps holding Gram in place released, allowing Wyvern to take the sword into both hands.

In a minute, he would be ready to kill all of them.

--

Fiona chewed her lip as she watched his life signs. In most cases of extended activity, brainwaves and heart rate would both accelerate significantly. And yet she watched the all-too-familiar telltale signs; Allen's brainwaves were slowing down while his heart began to pound furiously. She remembered all too well the first time that he had shown this behavior, and uttered a brief prayer, not for him, but for his opponents. As his operator, she could not look away, but instead paid almost total attention to the radar and heat scanners, rather than the camera view from the AC.

She witnessed the sudden charge, and a second later, one of the lights that represented an enemy AC's radar signature vanished. Shaking her head sadly, she continued to ignore the camera. She had heard that the Dogs of War Squadron's commander was infamous for his fury on the battlefield, but that fury blinded him. The fury that Allen currently possessed was anything but blinding fury. She had termed it cold fury. So much anger that it calmed him, honed his abilities, and…had a tendency of leading him to great cruelties.

--

Allen took a deep breath, and steeled himself. He knew what he had to do, and had a good idea of how he was going to do it. There was a chicken-joint AC out there, his first target. It would fall the fastest. Keeping track as they prepared for their second assault on his current position, he checked his primal armor. It would have to hold, or he was in serious trouble. Iron determination flooded his body, re-energized him.

Even as the remaining four ACs moved to close in on him, he engaged his own boosters, throwing himself through the upper half of the building in between his resting place and his attackers, at a perfect angle to surprise the chicken-walker. As the pilot attempted to maneuver backward and open fire with the two bazookas it hefted, Allen brought Gram down. All action seemed to stop as the primal armor failed to intercept the weapon.

It sheared completely through the left arm, but Allen did not stop. Wrenching Gram free of the ground, he twisted the blade and brought it across and up diagonally, tearing the knees off before he drew back and skewered the cockpit. A fit of movement caused the bazooka still clutched in its right hand to fire, concealing the area with smoke.

It was, thus, uncharacteristically but appropriately dramatic when Wyvern stepped out of the smokescreen and into converging fields of fire, the dead AC stuck on the end of the sword as a makeshift shield. Even as Wyvern appeared, they began to fire, and Allen felt no qualms about letting the skewered machine absorb as much fire as it could before it began to fall apart.

Constantly keeping an eye on his armor gauge, he whipped the sword forward, throwing the core body of the destroyed AC in the direction of the hover-equipped AC, which was currently trying to saturate the area with missiles. Boosting to the side, Wyvern barely dodged the destructive rain, explosions tearing up the entire stretch of street as the missiles attempted to catch the machine.

Popping open the right core compartment, Allen retrieved the shotgun, and then smirked fiendishly as the three charge again, opening fire. Slowly advancing to meet them, using as much cover as he could, he kept the drain on primal armor relatively low, refusing to fire. As he charged, they began to split off, and he scowled. They were intelligent, which was really making this difficult.

Finally he spotted a good launching point and the whine of his thrusters as they prepared to enter overboost mode. Sending Wyvern into a jump, the outstretched foot found a firm ground in the center of a decrepit building, and Allen sent the machine jumping again, before a column of flame erupted from the core, catapulting the AC forward. Closing with the hover-type, he winced as the primal armor gauge dropped rapidly. Shots from the two units he was not engaging and the flames boiling out of the flamethrower the hover-type equipped were impacting; he had to make this quick.

Raising the shotgun over Wyvern's shoulder, Allen fired off a single shot, the grenade rounds impacting and detonating around the rubble of the city. The sword pierced the flamethrower, causing it to explode and send the hover-type skidding to his left. Hearing the ominous tone of missile lock, Allen swore and closed in, swinging Gram one-handed. The sword went higher than he estimated, and rather than a deep slice through the cockpit, the sword decapitated the machine, simultaneously cutting the large twin missile pack it had equipped off.

Robbed of its sensors, the hover-type tried to boost forward, but Allen ran it through from behind, before splitting the machine cleanly in half down the center with Gram. Dispassionately, he picked up the missile pack and walked toward the remaining two.

--

Fiona resolutely watched the radar, ignoring the vitals. She knew that his brain was almost deathly still at this point, but his heart was singing. The fourth blip disappeared, and moments later the fifth did. She waited, and soon enough, soft as a whisper, Allen's voice cut across the comm channel. "Where's the convoy?"

She attempted to wet her mouth, and finally managed to croak out. "Seventy kilometers out. Heading by way of I-20. You can't seriously be considering going after the convoy. You're in no condition t-"

"I'm going to finish my mission." His declaration silenced her. She wanted to protest, but it was not the operative's job to argue with the Raven about his mission. She was to provide support the best she was able to. She opened her mouth to say that she understood when a question popped into her mind. She blinked, examined it, tried to recall an answer, and then finally asked. "Raven, what happened to all of the remaining _Scimitar_-class Muscle Tracers? You haven't re-engaged them and they're not that slow."

There was a long pause on the other end before the blip representing Wyvern began to move again. "I don't know. We can figure that out later. Right now, I have a convoy to stop."

_And a life to lose_, Fiona thought to herself.

--

Without the overboost, Wyvern had a strong enough generator to provide power to the boosters for most of the trip without needing to stop and allow the generator to recover energy. He caught up with the convoy twenty minutes later, his primal armor having recovered a quarter of its gauge to rest comfortably at about three-eighths of its full capacity. The column of trucks, short twenty-seven vehicles, cruised along. Its complement of fifteen AC guards kept pace.

With a resigned sigh, Allen placed his thumb over the overboost primer. He would at least go out in a blaze of glory.

Or at least, he thought that before those ten signals that he had seen before revealed themselves. Five on either side, they appeared from the brush and opened fire. Bullets, missiles, grenades, rockets, all suddenly streamed toward the convoy. Caught entirely off-guard, the Armored Cores bore most of the early brunt. Primal armor collapsed under concentrated fire, and one after another each fell, the trucks behind them caught in the explosions. Within a minute, the guard was annihilated, the convoy strewn across the highway in completely disarray.

"Fiona…what the hell just happened?" Allen could vaguely make out furious tapping before a raucous voice interrupted any response she might have made.

"Well well, so our baby dragon needed rescue after all!" Boisterous was not an accurate description for the voice. If Allen could appropriately recall the old vids, his accent would have originated from eastern Europe. The insinuation of helplessness did not pass over his head, and he scowled. Although it was petulant, he couldn't help but respond. "I was doing perfectly fine on my own. The convoy would have been eliminated."

"Don't kid yourself!" The voice suddenly cut all pretense of humor and cheer. "These bastards don't play fair. You'd have been destroyed before you even got near them. A sacrifice is only noble if it means something. You'd have wasted your life on a convoy that was carrying _parts_. Small wonder they sent the Dogs of War to save your ass."

Allen shut up, fuming, but able to hear the truth in the man's words. As much as he hated to admit it, the man was right. "Dogs of War, then? Who am I speaking to? I _hope_ the commander, since I have a commission as a commander myself."

"Da. My name is Alexei Ulyanov. Leader of the Dogs of War Squadron, the Mad Russian himself. You are the Baby Dragon, and we are here to get you out in one piece. Come along. It's time to go home."


	2. Chapter 2

Armored Core: A Reason to Fight

Armored Core: A Reason to Fight

An Armored Core Fanfic by

Joak Drysso

--

"And so I march up face-to-face with the commanding officer. I salute him, and he looks me up and down and says 'Demitrov, do you have any idea how much you have cost us this time?' I was drunk at that point, so I barely manage to slur out, 'No sir'. And he gets this evil look in his eyes, leans in close, and whispers 'You'll be paying off debts well into your second century. But we'll start this simple, with your clothes.'" Alexei paused here, to make sure that his companions were engaged, and then grins. "Now, I'm teetering, there was no way I was going to get my clothes off even if I had wanted to. I manage a 'No thanks' before I'm mobbed by some MPs who start stripping me down. So, in front of the entire battalion, I am now stark naked. And the CO stares at me for a moment, and everyone can see his mouth working for something to say before he just turns and storms out the door."

Kasumi Sumika, Alexei's operator, and Fiona both laughed, faintly flushed from the subject matter. Allen managed a grin as he picked up his cup and drained a bit of water. Alexei, still caught up in the tale, continued after they fell silent. "Now, the cafeteria is deadly silent. I've got all of my squadmates and the rest of the battalion staring at me. Then someone in the crowd yells 'Looks like something other than his own foot got caught in the CO's mouth!'" Now even Allen joined in the laughter. Alexei roared, and some of the other Dogs of War squadron members that happened to overhear him laughed, recalling the memory.

"So how about you, Baby Dragon?" Alexei had termed that nickname for him, and now it stuck, much to Allen's chagrin. The Dogs of War and even Fiona, when she was feeling snippy, were using it. "Surely you must have some interesting stories from your employment." Now that he thought about it, Allen did have several curious stories from when he worked for the corporations, but he had seen the way Alexei tightened up when the subject dipped that direction. So, keeping his voice light, he shrugged and demurred. "Nah, my life has been rather plain thus far. I don't have anything that can match that." _That_ was an outright lie.

And surprisingly, it was not Alexei, but Kasumi, who caught him. "Not so fast. You're lying. You've got something juicy, don't you?" Allen pinned her with an irritated look, receiving an amused, if slightly regretful smile in return. Tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling of their makeshift cafeteria in one of the relatively intact buildings of Atlanta, he smiled as he recalled it. "Well, when I was working as a Raven for another group," he started, artfully dodging around referencing who he was working for, "I was about sixteen. And it so happened that someone had started circulating rumors around that I had just had my heart broken by a girl and needed some…comfort, and a _lot_ of the operators were repressed…"

--

The celebration had died down, and now it was just the four of them sitting at the table discussing various things. As more and more people left, Allen had noticed Kasumi scooting closer to Alexei until she was resting against him comfortably. He wondered if they'd had a similar moment to his in his story; both Kasumi and Alexei had laughed, the latter incredibly amused by the forethought the perpetrator of that prank had put into it, but Fiona had been oddly silent. He had put it out of his mind; she was probably thinking of how her report was going to read.

Now they were discussing the possible actions that Line Ark would pursue. Alexei had just hinted at large amounts of squadrons being moved west toward Colorado, where rumor had it the Pax Economica was working on refitting and resupply for Spirit of Motherwill. Allen shook his head. "There's no way. If we tried to assault that thing, we'd be torn apart. There's no way that any force we sent could even close in, let alone get within range of damaging it."

Alexei shrugged. "That's just the conclusion I drew from the redeployment information. Could be they found some usable material that the Economica hasn't harvested. I'm not privy to that information." Allen frowned. Alexei's interpretation was probably the most accurate, but that didn't make it any less suicidal. An Armored Core could move incredibly fast, especially with overboosting. But it took a toll on the generator, and it was not faster than the cannons the Motherwill equipped. From training simulations and data reports, Allen knew for a fact that an Armored Core could dodge a round from the massive Kojima cannons, but not the massive explosion afterward.

It was, in effect, suicide to even attempt to assault an Arms Fort without using another Arms Fort. They were the only machines with the ability to stand up to a barrage from another of their kind. If Line Ark or Maglib could wrestle control of an Arms Fort away from the Pax Economica, there was no telling what kind of negotiating or military power they might gain.

They spent a bit more time trading information before one of the Dogs scrambled through the doorway. Saluting Alexei, the ensign cleared his throat. "Sir, communiqué from headquarters! They want the Dogs of War to return to the Gloucester Facility. Our orders are to bring Ba-er, Wyvern and his operator along. Command says that they have a surprise planned for us." Alexei nodded, and then saluted, dismissing the ensign. Turning back to the group, he sighed. "Business is such a buzz-kill. But orders are orders. And I do admit, I am curious about what Command has in store for us. Let us return home victorious, then!" He raised his bottle, and was soon joined by the remaining three in finishing off the last drink.

--

"No way. You can't be serious." A Dogs soldier murmured. Allen had to agree with him. All eleven of their machines had been seized immediately on arrival at Gloucester, and even now scientists were swarming their machines, tuning up the machines, replacing parts and preparing them for their new incarnation. The Dogs of War were becoming Line Ark's first Next squadron, and Wyvern, in exchange for payment and because of Allen's service record, was also receiving the upgrade. The pilots and their operators sat on a series of retrieved couches in a room that overlooked the hangar.

"We've already analyzed every person here. The lowest AMS compatability rating we could predict was 54, by Mercenary Barker. Even 54, though, presents a _massive_ advantage over a Normal in performance." The scientists had told them as the machines were being moved into the maintenance bays. "Thanks to Ms. Jarnefeldt's generosity in sharing her father's research with us, six of these eleven AMS interface devices are courtesy of our R&D division. The other five were cannibalized from captured Economica Next machines." Light applause for everyone involved followed before they were led to the room they were currently in.

Now that they had been seated, Allen turned to Ian Lifeson, the lead scientist who had presented himself for any questions. "Excuse me, doctor, but in the brief summary you gave us on the way up here, you mentioned that there were noted negative side effects in AMS use. Could you elaborate?" The doctor nodded, and after grabbing a cup of coffee from an aide, began.

"The Allegorical Manipulation System is a far superior system compared to the Actuator Complexity System, both of which outperform a Normal's control system. The ACS allowed pilots an incredible degree of control, but due to information mismanagement by Aldra, their secret got out. While everyone scrambled to figure out how to update the ACS, one man, Professor Blaise Jarnefeldt, sought to complete it. The AMS was born of his efforts." At this point, Allen held his hand up, and Ian paused. "Yes, Mercenary Barker?"

"With all due respect, sir, I don't need a comprehensive history of the device. I'm just curious about the negative side effects you mentioned." Dropping his hand, Allen sat back. In the seat next to him, Fiona chewed her lip lightly; she had seen the theoretical AMS, but her father had kept all of the tangible study and research information out of her hands. When she opened them for Line Ark, she had been too busy with other duties to look at them. Now she was finally beginning to learn about her father's legacy.

"Of course, Mercenary Barker, but this _is_ all relevant, I assure you, and you'll appreciate the trip." When no more questions arose, the scientist continued. "The Allegorical Manipulation System was designed to react to cognitive processes. While the ACS had an incredible amount of calculations designed to help the machine interpret the pilot's desire for a certain maneuver, the AMS was designed to react like the body would to such a cognitive focus. As a result, a certain psychic potential is required by anyone who desires to synchronize with the AMS and obtain results.

"Every member of the Dogs of War squadron tested positive for the requisite potential. You did as well, Mercenary Barker, but not all men are created equally. Because your mind is not able to synchronize with the machine at a satisfactory level, the AMS, in its effort to scan your cognitive functions, places a certain amount of pressure on your body. If you're lucky, it'll be a light ache you can ignore. If not, it'll be a nearly intolerable amount of pain. In exchange though, you'll be a god of the battlefield."

Allen sat back and frowned, staring at the scientist, who could only offer a shrug. "Unfortunately, there's no way to improve your synchronization, artificially or otherwise. You'll suffer this pain every time you pilot. But don't fret, Mercenary Barker. 54 is a pretty good number for not being very compatible with the AMS. If my memory serves, a pilot in the Maglib Liberation Front pilots with a 13 rate. No telling what kind of condition his body is in, eh?"

Allen opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. His index fingers dug into his chin as he rested his head on his hands. Most of the room was silent. "So this pain is the devil's bargain for nearly unparalleled control. Not much of a choice there." A few of the Dogs nodded, the rest looked at him thoughtfully. "I appreciate it, doctor. The candidness especially." Ian nodded and took a long drink from the coffee.

"It's heavy stuff, but it'll allow you to fight on par with enemy Nexts, and your average missions will be cake." The scientist's face suddenly brightened. "But that's the fun part! Alongside of your machines being upgraded, due to the fact that you are now the biggest concentration of Next pilots in Line Ark, you'll be getting tougher missions. We do need some information about performance capabilities after all, and if all of your contacts last thirty seconds at most we'll have a hard time getting that information."

Allen saw Alexei begin to ask what he meant by 'tougher missions' when the scientist produced a pair of packets, one designated 'Dogs of War' and the other 'Wyvern'. Handing each to its respective designate, he stepped back and brought his arms behind his back. Chewing his lip in anxiety, Allen tore open the packet, saw the contents, and paled. Judging by the soft swearing he heard from his right, he assumed Alexei had something similar.

The packet read 'Congratulations on your successful career, Raven. Your service to Line Ark is much appreciated, and we hope that the gift of the AMS to you is appreciated and put to good use. Because so much of our Next force is now concentrated in the Virginia area near Anatolia, we will be putting you to work on missions of appropriate difficulty. Because Anatolia is currently defended by Pax Economica soldiers due to Emil Gustav hiring out native pilots as mercenaries, it is not a key location for Line Ark operations. Instead, Next Wyvern will be moving west with the Dogs of War squadron to operate on the California coastline, interfering with operations maintained by the Bernard and Felix Foundation as well as Interior. The outpost in Watsonville will serve as your home base. Supplies will be handled by nighttime air drop and whatever your units can capture. Good luck, Raven. Or should we say, Lynx?'

Wordlessly, he handed the letter to Fiona, who began to read it, and glanced at Alexei. The large Russian man responded, shaking his head. Watsonville, California was a hotspot for trouble. It was a known Line Ark operating site, but one that was so minor and ineffective that the Economica never wasted the manpower eliminating it. If they were operating out of it, there was no doubt that they would quickly determine the origin of the assaults and launch an invasion. It was a terrible situation, but orders were orders.

"Enjoy your few days of rest, gentlemen," Ian said, draining his coffee as he strode toward the door. "You'll be getting precious little of it when you leave." And then the door shut behind him, and silence reigned for a minute.

"You know, Allen," Kasumi spoke softly from beside Alexei, "we seem to be getting bad missions when we have to work with you." She fell silent at a stern look from Alexei.

"Like he has a choice in the matter! I don't know what headquarters could be thinking! This move is suicidal! Even _if_ we managed to disrupt a few shipments, it wouldn't do more than irritate both BFF and Interior!" Fiona's voice was quickly becoming hysterical, but Allen reached up and, in a rare gesture of support, grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. She looked at him, and seemed to calm down. Clearing her throat, she sighed. "The gains we make for interrupting these assaults are nil compared to the potential losses Line Ark stands to sustain if, or when, this unit is wiped out."

"Rest assured, little one," Alexei returned evenly, "we have no intention of dying to a bunch of corporate dogs." Fiona shook her head. Allen knew that she was very likely going to start treading into dangerous territory shortly, but he was curious about where Alexei drew the line, and was fairly certain that when it came down to fists, he could take one or two shots from the Russian before he had to get her and run. "I have no intention of letting my pilot die either, but you have to realize that if we get the attention of two corporations who know where we are, nothing is stopping them from annihilating us."

"We have been given orders." Alexei's voice was cold now, and tense. _Easy, Fiona_, Allen thought to himself, _if we can avoid a fight here it'd be better_. "And we will _follow_ our orders like soldiers. Just because your pilot can't devote himself to a cause without monetary gain doesn't mean that all of us are the same. I joined to kill corporate dogs. If this means that I take on a job that a runt deems suicidal, so be it."

Allen had winced at the jab, but remained silent. It was something he had known he was going to catch flak for. He didn't remark on it though, continued to remain silent. Fiona, on the other hand, refused to give the issue up that easily. "You _didn't_ join Line Ark to get all of your soldiers killed by stupid orders! Your life isn't your own anymore, pilot, or have you forgotten that? You represent the largest investment Line Ark has made thus far on any one unit. If you have a death wish and want to go out fighting against the corporation, there are any number of suicide groups that would love to have you. While you're here, you have responsibilities to uphold, including _not_ throwing the lives of your pilots away."

That, Allen figured, was probably going to be the breaking point. And indeed, by the way that Alexei was very red and already rising from his seat, with similar motions exhibiting in some of the Dogs pilots, he decided that it was time to attempt some damage control. Before Alexei could cross halfway, Allen was up and in the way. "Now, now, let's not do anything _rash_." Even though he gave up more than half a foot to the Russian man, Allen didn't back down. Staring down at him, Allen had the distinct feeling that the soldier was about to spit.

Then he snorted, and the tension alleviated some. Taking a few steps back, Alexei shook his head. "She hasn't even fucked you and you stick your neck out for her. Talk about loyalty." He returned to his seat, and crossed his arms, giving no indication that he had noticed Kasumi nuzzling against him. Allen, on the other hand, exhaled, letting his shoulders sag, before he walked back and practically collapsed into his chair. Rolling his head so that he was looking at Fiona, he managed a smile. "Do you have to irritate the _big_ guys?"

Fiona, still blushing lightly from Alexei's comment, spit him with a stare. "Well, he was…wrong! And I had to say something!" Belatedly, she realized that she had leaned toward him, and sat upright, looking the other way. Allen merely chuckled and let his head roll back. _At least California won't be boring._

--

In the post-National Dismantlement War world, there were a select number of ways to get around. The simplest and as such most inconspicuous method of travel was on the ground by vehicle. With so much of the world a barren wasteland, visual-scan satellites were almost entirely focused on the colonies, creating an amazing level of surveillance. The remaining satellites performed weekly visual scans of the world to note any geographical changes of importance, like the formation of a base. These scanners, however, reacted to Kojima particles. This meant that, unless the goal was to attract attention through the use of anything that released Kojima particles, transportation inside of a Normal or Next was completely impossible.

This left one easily attainable option left. Flight and paradrop. It was not a foreign idea, in fact having been a tactic used several times in the war. Planes, however, attracted more attention from Corporations than trucks, which made them riskier. It had, however, been the option they elected to take. A cross-country trip in trucks would have driven the already-tense soldiers insane. Instead, they would suffer for a few hours in the plane and then make a low jump, landing some ten miles from their destination. They would register on the satellites, but not as anything special, they hoped. The key had been in not being noticed by ground forces and queried.

Now, as the California landscape rolled by underneath, Allen Barker found himself anxious. Not for the drop itself, but to discover what exactly Ian had meant by 'pain'. He saw the flickering lights in the eyes of the other Nexts, and hesitantly reached out, and then engaged the engine. For a brief moment, everything was normal. Then he felt it. "Gah!" The involuntary cry escaped him, and he felt shame at being so easily shaken.

The pressure was sudden and fierce. The first instance was a hammer against his skull, and every instant after that, it was a dull but intense ache. Forcing himself upright, he listened as the comm unit came to life. "All right, mutts, we'll be hitting ground ten miles outside of Watsonville. Our job is to get there as soon as possible with as little fanfare as we can. Understood?" A chorus of acknowledgment, and then the line was silent again. Allen tried to soften the ache, failed. "We have the green light. Wyvern, go!"

Instinctually, Allen's mind started to move the machine, and the AMS responded in kind, moving even as Allen sought to move it. The throbs returned, but Allen refused another sign of weakness. Wyvern stepped out of the plane's bay and plummeted into the California sun. With but a mind's thought, the thrusters primed and gouts of flame spouted from the back with the press of the button. Wyvern slowed and then stopped its fall. Curiously, Allen noted, the generator was providing enough power that the continued thrust did not drain its output.

As the others fell below him and his headache regained his attention, he too let himself fall.

--

"Hm?" Richard Lyer was not a man who took note of every minor detail, but that was not the reason that he was trusted with keeping a watch on satellite reports. It was the fact that if something anomalous registered, he was very quick to notify his superiors, and he had a keen eye for noticing the more important, less-regarded anomalies. So it was no surprise when his fingers were already tapping in the extension for his boss's personal communications device.

After two pulses, a groggy voice answered. "Y'ello?" Richard frowned. That his boss was groggy indicated a lack of sleep, which meant that he wouldn't be getting through. Still, what he had might be enough to wake the man up. "Sir, this is Richard Lyer in SatIntel. I'm detecting several spikes in Kojima readings in California, east of Santa Cruz. Near…Watsonville."

He paused, and worried that his words had fallen on deaf ears, when his boss's voice cut through, very clear and very alert. "What did you say? Watsonville?"

"Yes sir. I checked the records just now and it appears that a Line Ark forward base was established there. The computer lists the base as "non-threatening" despite the fact that there were operations running from it, and now that they've reinforced it…"

"Richard, Watsonville was eradicated last week. We sent in a full team of marines to destroy everything there. All of the people at that base are dead." The line was silent for a moment. "If they're sending a team there…either they're unaware of anything happening at all to their team, or they've sent them to find out what happened. I would bet on the former." Another pause. "Thank you, Richard. This information is very valuable. I'll see to it that your next reviews for promotion and raises are _very_ favorable."

Even before Richard could respond, the line died. Still, the boss would put in recommendations for him, and if the information was that important, maybe the higher-ups would too. Looking distinctly satisfied, Richard resumed watching the group of signals, looking for further information. After all, there was no reason not to further increase his value to the company.

Elsewhere, the boss grinned. This information was good news, good news indeed. His fingers danced across the keyboard, sending a message to the strategic branch of the Interior Western Coast Operations. They would decide what to do about this sudden interest Line Ark had in operations on the west coast. He hoped, though, that the new tenants of the Watsonville Base would appreciate Interior's…handiwork.

--

"What the hell happened here?" An ensign from the Dogs squadron murmured loud enough for the rest to hear them. They had entered the hangar and found the place nearly untouched, but unsettlingly silent. Surely headquarters had alerted them of the unit's arrival. As they had entered the base proper, another story, far more disturbing, began to reveal itself. The first body they found in a hallway, riddled with bullet holes. The further in they went, the more blood, the more bodies, the more depraved the scene became.

Kasumi was an unfortunate victim. She collapsed to her knees, gritting her teeth, trying not to become overwhelmed. "The pain…the suffering…it's all too much!" The questioning looks sent his way prompted Alexei, who was trying to help her recover, to explain. "We Lynxes may have the psychic potential required to synchronize with the AMS, but Kasumi is a true psychic…in a certain sense. She has the power of empathy."

"It's…the imprint." She winced. Her body shivered uncontrollably, and she rubbed her arms as though trying to warm her body. "There is so much fear here. Pain, terror, death. It…hurts." Her face paled, then turned an odd shade of green. Alexei gave the group an apologetic look, and then carried her back toward the hangar.

Shuddering, Fiona turned back to the scene before them. The recreation facility. Corpses and bullet holes, craters left by grenades. A battlefield, without the battle. It had been an almost perfect ambush. People caught totally unaware. It was terrifying. More than terrifying, it was amazing in a morbid kind of way; the people executing this had to have been perfectly organized. Nobody could have had more than a moment's warning. The young redhead voiced as much, and nobody could disagree.

"So what do we do?" Another Dogs soldier asked. Allen looked around, and then nodded to himself. "First, we locate the quarters. We're moving beds into the hangar until this place is cleaned out, for Kasumi's sake. We need to figure out what we're doing with the bodies as well. We don't have the material to bury them, but a funeral pyre-"

"I like that." Alexei sounded, returning, looking far wearier than he had moments ago. "A warrior's burial. To honor the dead killed by cowardice. But we have to be careful about it. No doubt a huge fire would draw attention we don't need right now." He walked off toward the barracks, and the group followed him, stepping around debris and bodies. They split off into different rooms, checking to see if a clean bed or sheets were available. After thoroughly looting the barracks for sleeping supply, they returned.

Kasumi sat against the wall, still shivering a bit, as the caravan of beds came through, smiling slightly as Alexei tried to make it through the door with two mattresses at the same time. The smile became laughter when he got stuck, and it took the combined effort of Allen, who was still behind him, and a few Dogs soldiers to pull him through. Her laughter seemed to warm up the hangar, and some of the dark mood that had settled on them dissipated. Her laughter was joined by Alexei's, Allen's, and then the whole unit was laughing at something that was not all that funny, because they needed to laugh. The warm sounds echoed throughout the halls, breathing new life into the decrepit facility. As three of the Dogs soldiers set to cooking the food they had brought with them, Allen tended to Wyvern while the other nine sat at various parts of the hangar exchanging jokes.

Dogging a panel shut on Wyvern's right foot, he paused to wipe his forehead with a rag before reaching for the large jug of water he kept with him. Encountering air, he turned around and saw Fiona finishing a pull on it before handing it back to him. Giving her a sour look, he took it and drank heavily. Setting it back down, he turned and popped open the next hatch. He heard a soft thump behind him and turned. She smiled at him, tucking an errant strand of crimson hair behind her ear, green eyes taunting him. "Don't mind me. I'm just watching."

Allen sighed. "You'd be more helpful if you were actually working on this thing with me." He turned his attention back to calibrating and tuning. They had already had this kind of discussion before, and he already knew how she would respond. "I would help you, but my knowledge of Armored Core maintenance is nonexistent. If you were talking design I could help, but I'm not much good with this." Or at least, he had assumed that was going to be her response.

"When did you become so good at maintenance?" He paused in his work, but didn't turn around, and then continued to tinker with the wiring of his beast. He could hear her shift, knew she was getting ready to leave, and decided at last to answer. "I was around seven. Like most little kids, I loved the concept behind Armored Cores. I mean, what kind of boy doesn't cherish the thought of giant machines causing wanton destruction? But whenever I played in the simulators, I performed rather poorly."

"Well, the simulators that children had access to weren't entirely accurate, as I'm sure you're now aware. The gross oversimplification of every system, the unrealistic physics engine…" She trailed off, then, apparently expecting him to pick up where she had cut in. He chuckled softly as he remembered his frustration at performing so poorly in the games, and the mockery of his friends.

"Well, no, they weren't the best simulation of Armored Core combat, but back then that didn't matter. I got disheartened, but I still loved to be around them. So I decided to get involved in maintenance and repair. For a year and a half it was hanging out at a facility about a mile outside Hampton for the afternoon almost every day, bugging the mechanics and owners. Then they started actually letting me get involved. Not unsupervised, but it was an eight year old's dream to have access to giant robots. And in the little remaining time that facility existed, I learned a lot about Armored Cores, how they fit together and how their insides meshed, and how you could tune specific ways for optimal performance."

He turned around, and glanced over the bench Fiona was sitting on for the wrench he needed. Spotting it, he reached for it, only to have her grab it and hand it to him. Nodding his thanks, he returned to work. "Then the National Dismantlement War happened. Since the area around Hampton and the Langley Air Force Base was transformed into Anatolia, we were fortunate enough not to need to be moved. But that factory was demolished. Another was set up inside the confines of Anatolia, and I got a job there on the recommendation of a few returning Ravens. Worked there until it was destroyed."

"Destroyed? You mean by…" Fiona started, and stopped when he nodded. Seven years after Anatolia had been formed, two Armored Cores tore up large chunks of town, killing thousands in their duel. The fight did not end in Anatolia, thankfully, but damage had been done. The official spin on the story was that two rebel factions had been fighting it out and Anatolia was the battleground. Fiona had refused to take their word at face value and after some investigation had determined that they had been two Economica machines from opposing companies. That had spurred her decision to join Line Ark in the first place.

"Yeah. So I left Anatolia. Went to work at GA Europe for two years. Then they tested me out in the simulators and it turned out I was a good enough pilot to join the Armored Core unit. I declined their offer, but became a Raven. For most of the past six years, I worked as a peacekeeper in Kamirovgrad, in Russia. When I got the call and bid from Line Ark, I came back." He continued working, so she couldn't see his face, but she could hear the bleak tone. "No nationalism, no desire to save people, just a contract. That's why I'm here."

He stepped back, and then reached again for the jug, which he found. Bringing it up, he took a long drink, and set it back down. "That should do for right now." Forcing the hatch into place, he shook his head, and then turned. Most of the soldiers were still engaged in conversation, but Alexei and a healthier-looking Kasumi were standing near Fiona. Kasumi looked thoughtful, Alexei wary. Allen said nothing, but reached for the towel. Wiping his face off, he shucked his shirt and toweled himself off before draping it over his shoulders. "So how about you, Mad Russian? Why are you here?"

Alexei started, and then gazed at Allen appraisingly. "I was born in Tyumen. Lived there until the opening act of the National Dismantlement War, when I was sixteen. Despite the fact that Russia surrendered quickly, Siberia took the brunt of the damage. Tyumen was almost completely destroyed. A hundred people survived." He frowned. "They shoved the entire population of Russia, what remained of it, into Kamirovgrad, as well as spillover from Kazakhstan. More than one billion people confined into an area only slightly larger than Anatolia. It was _chaos_. I lost my family. I had no desire to work for the people who had destroyed everything. So I took to the streets. Started a gang."

He smirked at the first flickers of recognition in the faces of the two Anatolia natives. "Yes, that's right. A gang. I was the one who instigated the Week's Length War. Ten thousand people, at least, dead in a week because I was belligerent and refused to back down to someone else. The largest death toll in a non-military action in human history. I left halfway through. Couldn't take it anymore. I took a ride to Aspina in Denmark and then hopped across the pond to Anatolia. The first time I heard about Line Ark, I hunted them down immediately. Told them I wanted to join. They let me. I've been here for fourteen years attempting to try and make amends by fighting the abomination that put everything in a position for that nightmare to happen."

Allen listened, and then at last nodded. Taking another drink, he looked at Wyvern. "We should move tonight. See if some shipment is in easy range."

Alexei nodded and walked off, but Fiona interrupted. "What, that's it? No…apology? Nothing? That story is terri-"

"Fiona." Kasumi's voice cut through, and Fiona fell silent. "He appreciates your concern, but he doesn't want pity. He's carried this burden for nearly half of his life. He just wants to be acknowledged as a fighter."

Fiona looked at Allen, whose behavior was no different, and then at Alexei, who was now caught up with another group of Dogs laughing at some joke, and shook her head. "The weight it puts on him must be terrible."

"I know." The petite Japanese operator said softly. Fiona was confused for a moment before she recalled. Empathy. The torment he went through, mentally, she endured as well. Putting on a brave smile, and trying inwardly to cheer herself up, she threw an arm across Kasumi's shoulder and hugged her. "Well, then let's go see if we can't arrange for these fighters to get some work done tonight, then."

She led them off, leaving the hangar to access the terminals nearby.

--

It was nine o'clock. The only light in the cockpit was the timer, and Allen was reclining in his seat, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed. The only indication that he wasn't sleeping was the conversation he was currently involved in with Alexei. "She's a good woman." The gruff Russian said.

"I know." He replied. "She's a great operator, and she knows more about Armored Core design than anyone I've ever met."

"That's not what I'm talking about."

"Then what _are_ you talking about?"

"She's a good woman."

"…oh, you've gotta be kidding me." Allen groaned, planting his forehead firmly in his palm. "You're seriously trying to advise me to start a relationship with my operator? With Fiona Jarnefeldt? You've got to be joking."

"What? If you haven't noticed that I'm sleeping with my operator, I'd say you were blind. What's so out-of-place about me suggesting that you bed yours?" He could hear Alexei's amusement at his reaction, but that really only served to exacerbate Allen's own frustration.

"Sure. You and Kasumi sleep together. I'm not you, and she's not Kasumi." He sighed in irritation. "I'm not good with personal relationships, and neither is she. We're hardly compatible. She drives me insane and I know that I piss her off. There's no way that it could work out." When Alexei started to laugh, his anger only grew. "What, may I ask, is so funny?"

"You." The Russian managed to gasp out between laughs. "You say you're not me, but damn if you two aren't the mirror image of me and Kasumi."

"What, you two hated each other?" _That_ Allen could hardly believe.

"No. I rubbed her the wrong way for a long time though. We scarcely got along, mostly because she hated being near me. The empathy thing, you see, and she was only thirteen at the time." Allen quirked a brow. "Relax, I can tell from here that you're worried. Nothing happened then. It took her three years to finally start getting used to being around me, and we hit it off. One year later, we slept together."

"And nobody thought it was odd that a twenty-seven year old man was sleeping with his seventeen year old operator?"

"It was worse when she was thirteen. It was her decision to do what she did. I don't regret accepting her offer, and I have no reason to believe she does either. Trust me, you two can't stand each other right now, but she'll grow on you faster than you think."

"Like a fungus."

Again, the laughter. "That's one way to think of it, Baby Dragon."

A beep caught his attention and the laughter died away as their comm units went live. "Confirmed coordinates of shipping fleet. All units, prepare to move out. Screen is minimal but present, so don't let your guard down." Fiona's 'all-business' voice soothed some of the tension of the conversation that he had just had, and Allen felt ready to get down to brass tacks.

"Shipping fleet within accepted operating range. All units, move out!" Kasumi followed. As one, the eleven machines activated, and then Allen and Alexei shot off first, the remaining units following close behind in a speartip formation. It had been agreed upon that Wyvern and Samael, Alexei's unit, had notable speed advantages, so they would split up and strike the flanks of the fleet at the moment that the spearhead, led by Lieutenant Commander Nwoye Achebe, struck the center.

Even with the pain, Allen found it much easier to focus now that he had a purpose. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last time, he found himself amazed at how much more power the generator was able to supply with the AMS upgrade. Previously, the Overboost function had chugged energy at a ludicrous rate, allowing at most ten seconds of continuous movement before redlining. Now, he was nearing the thirty-second mark on the timer and still had a few seconds more. He had kept pace with Alexei's charge around the right flank, circling wide on the left. The intel they had gained on the shipment from hacking into the cargo manifest for Interior had shown that two of their ships, one on each end of the fleet, were equipped with AWACS setups. Skirting the sensor range while waiting for the speartip to get into position made for a fun, if risky, game.

"Speartip in position. Operation begins in five seconds." Nwoye whispered into the comm. The five seconds seemed to take forever. "Mark!"

In that instant, all hell broke loose. Even before Allen could angle inward toward the fleet, Alexei let loose with Samael's hellish armament. Primarily composed of long-range equipment, Samael boasted an incredible compliment of missiles as well as a left-arm mounted howitzer; in its right hand, Samael clutched a rifle, its only concession toward opponents able to close in on it. And right now, the lead AWACS ship was taking an astonishing pounding from Samael as it unloaded a full barrage of LRMs and relation missiles, as well as a pair of shots from the battleship-grade howitzer cannon.

The missiles struck the Destroyer, decorating its surface with explosions. The return fire was weak, most of the weapons installations having been destroyed in the missile barrage. The two five-inch Armor Piercing rounds cored through the Destroyer, exiting out its underside. Even as Alexei began to evade the incoming fire, the ship was listing badly, and he stopped paying attention to it entirely. The escort on this fleet was amazingly light, and with the two AWACS Destroyers taken out of the picture, there were only two frigates to take out.

Allen wrenched Gram free of the smoking heap that was the Destroyer's first five-inch main cannon, and leveled the shotgun at the second. He pulled the trigger and the grenade round shattered the casing and annihilated the turret, causing Allen to smirk. Stabbing Gram through the deck of the machine, he fired Wyvern's boosters, dragging the sword through the deck, setting off several secondary explosions. Noting the sudden imbalance, Allen tore the blade out, stored it on its shoulder, and jumped, taking to the skies.

He spotted the speartip already colliding with the cargo haulers, their frigate already capsizing. Nwoye was a talented sub-commander, it appeared, and a fine pilot. "First to trash the other frigate wins." Alexei's voice came across the channel, and Allen laughed, shaking his head. "You'd beat me to that easily. I'll settle for demolishing these cargo fleets, you have fun with the pea-shooter." Chuckles from the rest of the Dogs of War filtered across.

Methodically, they continued to eliminate the fleet. All told, from the beginning to the end of the engagement, no more than five minutes passed; with a fleet of thirty vessels, that equated to six vessels a minute. The praise was almost universally positive with regard to the modifications that were made in Gloucester. Cruising back toward the coast, the chatter was lighthearted, and Allen was content to listen to it, letting it distract him from the pounding in his head.

Then, Kasumi's voice came over the line, thick with apprehension. "I hate to interrupt your party, but you have a _massive_ Kojima signature incoming. It could either be a large force of Armored Cores or…" her voice trailed off. Everyone knew what the _or_ was. Nobody wanted to face that reality though. "Keep your visual scanning up. It's coming in from the…west? It was on the ocean?"

The comm line cut off as Kasumi and Fiona conferred. Allen, however, had a sinking feeling. "Dogs of War, Wyvern. Suggest we move fast. I don't like this at all."

"Leader agrees." Alexei commented. "Get moving as fast as you can."

Nobody spoke as they skimmed across the water toward land. And that was when Allen saw it. He had been watching the water, almost hypnotized by the reflection, when he noticed that ripples and waves were forming ahead of him. But there was nothing in front of him. Before he could start warning the Dogs about his suspicion, the ocean a kilometer ahead suddenly bulged before the nose of an enormous machine protruded from it.

The comm was suddenly alive with chatter as individual soldiers swore and broke off, swerving to avoid the colossal machine. But through all of the mess, Allen heard the sentence that chilled him to the core. "Arms Fort Stigro confirmed."

"Dogs of War, Wyvern, scatter! Don't bunch up and it can't catch all of us!" Alexei roared, and the eleven signals split up. Despite the fact that more than half of the Armored Cores had engaged their overboosts and were now pulling ahead of the others, Stigro was faster, moving ahead to cut them off. "Dogs of War, Wyvern, tactical analysis in process. Records indicate that Stigro is armed with a pair of twenty-cell missile launchers and four forward-facing sixteen-inch guns. Fluxes in Kojima radiation suggest a Kojima weapon of some kind. Working to analyze. Stay far away from it."

"You don't have to worry about that." Allen muttered to himself. Swinging around to the left of the Arms Fort, he watched as the beast of a machine unloaded a full barrage of forty missiles. Half impacted against the water, but the remaining found their marks on the primal armor of two Dogs pilots, and Allen could already see the barriers stuttering, signaling that they were going to collapse if they took another shot. Before anyone could react, the machine was diving again, throwing up a huge wall of water. The Armored Cores tore through the barrier, though Allen swore as one of his thrusters began to sputter.

"Kojima spike detected! Wyvern, move!"

Realizing that the thruster wouldn't restore itself in time, he hammered one of the quick boost buttons, his body thrown into the right side of his seat as the machine suddenly leapt to its left. A massive shape cut through the space he had inhabited a moment ago, reaching skyward for a good fifty meters before it fizzled out of existence. "What the _hell_ was that?!"

"Kojima blade!" Fiona sounded startled herself. "A huge one! Wyvern, you have to get out of there now! It's circling around behind you!"

Scowling, he checked the problem thruster. "No can do, not yet. One of my thrusters got a bit soaked in the spray it created when it dove. It's not responding like I need it to for overboost. It'll probably be a good thirty seconds before I can get moving."

"Coastline is in twenty miles. If you can get near it, the Stigro should be forced to stop its pursuit and try to saturate the beach with artillery instead, which should be easier to dodge." Fiona mused, tapping rapidly at her keyboard.

"Unit Samael, what are you doing?" Kasumi suddenly spoke over the line. Reflexively, Allen checked his radar, and saw that Alexei's machine was slowing down, allowing Allen to catch up to him. "Are you suicidal?"

"I'm not leaving a pilot to face this thing alone. Remember, we have the fastest units here. Once Wyvern's thrusters are working properly, we'll hightail it out of here. If it wants to play with us, we'll let it." Grim silence met his declaration, and then a frustrated sigh. "Understood, Commander. Current speed to coastline will have you there in four minutes. Godspeed."

The line was silent. Allen watched the seconds pass, listening for the gauges and alarms that would sound when the Stigro finally resurfaced and began to target them. Twenty seconds passed before the sounds started. "Evasive action." Alexei ordered, and the two began to veer in opposite directions, making short hops through the air, occasionally sinking to the knee joints in the water before leveling out again. At twenty-five seconds, the klaxons shrieked; not only had it fired another full barrage of missiles, it was now both accelerating and firing the four cannons fairly rapidly. At twenty-nine seconds the first shells were impacting in the water, sending up spouts. The two pilots knew that the missiles, fired in a high arc, were but a few seconds behind.

At thirty seconds, Allen felt more than heard the thruster re-engage. "Get moving, Samael." His thumb compressed the overboost button and after the half-second's lag to engage the generator for increased output, both machines suddenly shot forward.

The missile barrage plowed into the ocean, but the alerts were screaming that another forty had been fired. Allen ground his teeth together; with overboost engaged, they easily covered an extra mile in the thirty seconds they could sustain, and using it at intermittent times increased even that. The four-minute estimate could dip below three if they were careful.

That was, of course, assuming that the Stigro didn't overtake them. The way the machine was gaining on them steadily, he was betting that wouldn't be the case. Gunfire and missiles detonated all around him, and in two unfortunate cases _on_ him, tearing off more than half of his primal armor in the process. "Kojima buildup occurring." Fiona warned. "Be alert, we know the blades are long, but we don't know how flexible they are."

He saw Samael turn toward him, and then fully turn to face Samael. Still boosting backward, Alexei began to demonstrate a level of control that astonished Allen. A trick that few people ever used in an Armored Core was to wrap the Primal Armor around the machine, because while it offered more protection against damage, it offered no shock absorbance, and a full hit against even a Next without shock absorption would transfer the blow to the pilot. It was used only by people who were supremely confident of their ability to evade without having to wear down their Primal Armor on near-misses. And Alexei, twitching his way out of the incoming missiles and shells from the Stigro, was showing that confidence. Only twice did he let the Primal Armor unwrap to its full sphere.

It was Alexei who noticed the gleam. "Wyvern, jump." Cutting the overboost, Allen engaged the normal thrusters again, lifting the machine up off the water, skyward. He saw the huge blade, now at least two hundred meters in length, slice toward Alexei who jumped up as well, using the temporary time above the cannons to unload a barrage of his own. The missiles struck the turrets, but three refused to crack. One did, and after a series of five howitzer shots, a tremor shook the Stigro. The gun detonated immediately afterward.

Then Allen noticed the blade halt its horizontal trek and angle upward. "Samael, incoming!" The quick-boost carried it to the right of the second sweep, and Allen opened fire, trying to track the projector with his machine gun. The bullets detonated harmlessly against the sleek machine's shell, and then it dove again. "It's circling back around. Get out of there." Fiona ordered.

"No arguments here." Splashing down into the water, Allen checked his generator's gauge and then continued to speed along toward the coastline which was beginning to appear.

Thirty seconds went by in silence, before Kasumi cut in. "Kojima signature departing. Looks like Stigro's commander doesn't want to try and fight in shallow water." He heard the audible exhale from Alexei, and matched it with one of his own.

"Dogs of War Squadron and Wyvern returning to base hale and hearty. Good job, everyone."

Allen nodded, and allowed a lot of the tension to drain from his body. But something was bothering him. Opening a private frequency to Alexei, he spoke. "Stigro being right in range to intercept us on our retreat…that's too coincidental, don't you think? They had no reason to believe that there would be an assault on that shipment, did they?"

"It's suspicious. And the only conclusion I can reach is one that I really, really dislike."

"They knew we were there. They were waiting for us to make a move."

"Da."

"You're right. I really, really dislike that conclusion."

--

Enrique Costaños had done many things in his life. He had built a fortune on consumable products pre-NDW. In the post-NDW world, he had even managed to keep his business afloat, although just barely; his fortune remained, but the flow was more a spigot than a fountain now. And he had also organized the Line Ark resistance force. He was proud of all of these things. But he was most proud of being rich, especially in the new society.

For that reason, he had made this latest deal. In exchange for some things, his bank account swelled. It was a very satisfactory feeling. And as he puffed a cigar, a vintage Cuban from twenty years ago, he let the thought sour mildly as he realized what he had to do now. It was the only unfavorable part of the agreement, but a deal was a deal and he liked the money he was seeing, and those were just the _first_ payments. He would be able to afford a large chunk of Mars at this rate.

Pressing a button, he removed the cigar from his mouth. "Lily, please send in Counselor Luc." His secretary responded with an affirmative, and he motioned. Several men made preparations off to the side of the door. It opened a moment later and Hector Luc, a valued member of Line Ark's strategic counsel, stepped in. Enrique smiled widely, and welcomed him, their cue. The men seized Hector, and then one stepped forward and sank a needle into his jugular, before injecting the contents of the syringe. Removing it, a chair was brought forward and Hector sank into it.

Enrique's smile changed, becoming infinitely sadder as he saw the blank look of stupor his longtime friend held. Checking his watch, he waited for the five minute mark to hit. Then, he rose, and crossed the room, kneeling before his friend. "Hector. Hector, wake up." Unsteadily, his friend's eyes opened, a dazed and glassy look over them. "Hector, say something."

The man mumbled, and Enrique looked at the man, who nodded. Shrugging, Hector returned his attention to the counselor. "Hector, I need you to pay attention. Okay? In two days, the Strategic Counsel is meeting to decide whether or not to make any major action. You are going to vote to attack the Arms Fort Spirit of Motherwill. It's the only option you have. That we have." Hector seemed to doze, and Enrique slapped him. "Hector, pay attention! Repeat after me. We must assault the Spirit of Motherwill."

"We…can't…suicidal…"

"Hector, pay attention, and repeat. We must assault the Spirit of Motherwill."

"We…must assault…" Enrique nodded.

"Remember, in two days' time you will present this option. It will pass with an overwhelming vote. Do your job and everything will go smoothly." He smiled, and then rose, glancing at the man who held the syringe. "What did you inject him with?"

"Sodium thiopental. It works very well for operations like this. Give me a minute to get this guy out of the room and refill the syringe and we'll proceed."

"Yes, of course." Enrique returned to his desk position. Tick-tock, tick-tock. When the man gave him the thumbs-up signal, Enrique pressed the button again. "Lily, please send in Counselor Travis."


End file.
